6.27.2006

I feel sleazy. I am not out in the heat doing physical labor, like my father once did, like my mother once did, like my sister does on Arcata farms, like my friends do in foundation pits and cherry factories.

I feel sleazy about that.

Have done it. Building sheds, canning, gutting and cleaning filthy apartments. But right now I'm just a slip of here and that, a waste of water.

Thus: sleaze.

I wrote a SoQ poem because my new SoQ life "amuses" me. The rich people in this town smell of plastic rosewood, maple cures (in bottles, in bottles of maple pills) and sloths (dead sloths).

But this has nothing to do with all that.

It's actually okay, I'm doing well. I've drafted three new short stories. Okay, raise your hand if you give a shit. You shouldn't. Turn to your favorite news source for pictures of charred buses, useless shrugs, a conflict dreary with thousands of years and gallons of hatred.

I wish this had something to do with all that.

I wish I could write something about that.

Should I?

This is two posts in one. That was the first post.

The next post: I wrote a SoQ poem because my new SoQ life "amuses" me. I couldn't stay the course. It sounds like James Tate eating confetti-colored mints. Oh well. I'm glad it's not too quiet.

Now That I Own a Door

Leave you outside, you said,with the spider on my doorbell.Well, maybe him? Does he want tojoin me and drag-race an armored car?Fill my molars with melted honey bears?Stay up until two playing the mandolinwith me, lift me -- it has a nice ring.Listen, kid: all of your friends areburnt sod and none of them want to hearthe name June laughed from a tailgateoutside a stadium of grass like tall womenthinking about something else whenthey lean into bus poles, when theywon't push the door before a sigh.Your best bets are cable receiptsand neighborhood popsicle bratsin Hulk Hogan t-shirts, asking aftermore kids. No, sorry. Just a crustof sleet -- but lemme check the burnerstwice, then the last gimp of my Crest.I will find one yet to let back in.

The blue paste is just blue paste -- symbolism isn't real because people are too impatient to deal with it. According to this logic, airports are also not real. It's blue paste because I was dressed up as a smerf.